On Change and Relevance for Higher Education

Phil Long, a veteran strategist in technology and learning, comments on some of the most asked-about challenges for higher education institutions today.

National Academies Reports Examine U.S. Data Science Education

Two new reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine tackle data science for educators. One report summarizes the findings of a workshop on training students to "extract value from big data." The other is intended to help institutions envision data science from an undergraduate perspective. Both reports are available on the National Academies Press website.

Ed Index Compiles Higher Ed Data for Research, Reporting

A non-partisan, nonprofit think tank has produced an online resource where people can access and download data on U.S. higher education for use in research, reporting and public access. New America's new Higher Ed Index pulls data at the institution level from three federal sources: the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the Federal Student Aid Data Center and the College Scorecard. The data can be viewed over time at the institution, state and national levels and can be filtered by dozens of categories.

Kansas State Library Upgrade to Add Group Study Rooms, Event Space and More

Kansas State University is drumming up private financial support for a renovation of its main library's first floor. Under the new design Hale Library will offer five new "zones": dedicated to meeting, studying, relaxing, inventing and sharing ideas. Construction on the $6.5 million project is expected to begin in May 2018.

Research Project Makes Incognito Browsing Even More Private

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Harvard University recently presented a paper describing "Veil," a new system intended "to make private browsing more private." Among other security features, Veil encrypts any data stashed by the browser in memory until it's displayed on the screen; the data is unintelligible until it passes through the Veil decryption algorithm.

Microsoft Co-Founder Invests in Pursuit for AI Common Sense

Paul Allen has committed $125 million over three years to support the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and to launch "Project Alexandria," a new research initiative to explore "common sense artificial intelligence." Allen is, of course, the co-founder of Microsoft and a philanthropist known most recently for investing in efforts to discover the underwater wreckage of American naval ships sunk during WWII.

Rice Joins International Credit for MOOCs Program

Rice University and 10 other institutions in Europe, Asia and Australia have agreed to be part of a three-year "Credits for MOOCs" program that allows students from the participating schools to enroll in specific free online courses from the other member schools and receive transfer credits for passing them. When it's fully up and running, the pilot effort will feature from three to 10 credit-bearing online classes from each institution for the "virtual exchange." The program, which is in its second semester for the 2017-2018 academic year, currently features 18 courses.

New APLU Center to Tackle Public University Transformation

The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities has launched a new national Center for Public University Transformation. The initiative will bring together a hundred public research universities organized in clusters to identify, refine and scale innovative practices to increase the number of four-year degree holders over the next seven years. The institutions that participate will share key data within the clusters and help to propagate the practices across higher ed.

Coursera More than Doubles Number of Degrees on Its Platform

Online education platform vendor Coursera has announced six new online degrees with major universities, more than doubling the number of degrees offered on its platform. The new degree programs, all expected to launch later this year or in 2019, will bring the number of programs offered on the platform to 10.

Upcoming Events

Webinars on Demand